Notes & Quotes

Hope you enjoy some miscellaneous thoughts and quotes:

An elite class that is free to operate without limits – whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior – is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power. – Glenn Greenwald

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. – Patrick Henry

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well. – Aristotle

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. – Aristotle

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” – Karl Marx

“Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” – Franklin Roosevelt

A Caesar at home and a Chamberlain abroad, Obama manages to simultaneously provoke fury and ridicule. He bullies critics here while shrinking from adversaries there. He divides the country and unites the world against us, ­diminishing the nation in both ways. His reign of error can’t end soon enough, nor can it end well. – Michael Goodwin

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Josef Goebbels

The Six Mistakes of Man – Cicero

The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others

The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected

Refusing to set aside trivial preferences

Insisting something is impossible because we cannot accomplish it

Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading & studying

Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country. – Salman Rushdie

Some examples of hypocrisy

The spine of the FBI is the rule of law. The spine of the FBI is a commitment to doing the right thing, in the right way, while protecting civil liberties – James Comey

I will be vigilant to protect the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court, and I will work to ensure that it upholds the rule of law and safeguards those liberties that make this land one of endless possibilities for all Americans. – John Roberts

Great countries need to secure their border for national security purposes, for economic purposes and for rule of law purposes. – Jeb Bush

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law – Barack Obama

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. – Alexis de Tocqueville

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. – C. S. Lewis

The press is the hired agent of a monied , and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing. – Henry Adams

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. – Alexis de Tocqueville

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. – Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

“What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through “sensitivity training” and multiculturalist curricula, “hate crime” laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.” – Samuel Francis

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites … or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and “pathological” elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms – people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible – not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations. – Samuel Francis

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. –Friedrich Nietzsche

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. – Friedrich Nietzsche

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. – Aristotle

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law. – Aristotle

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress. – John Adams

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other. – John Adams

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. – John Adams

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness. – Cicero

In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side.- Euripides

Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future. – Euripides

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. – James Madison

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves. – Jonathan Swift

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. – Martin Luther King, Jr

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve… But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay … No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.- Frederic Bastiat

“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.” – Socrates

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? – Jesus

I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived. – Alexis de Tocqueville

Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of – for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. – Socrates

Man…is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. – Plato

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. – Aquinas

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. – Aristotle

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. – Plato

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. – Ayn Rand

Consider this quote and compare it to the thinking of our current day political elite. Do they not desire absolute government that dictates everything that we do and wish to provide everything through government at the expense of free enterprise? Are they protectors of the Constitution or do they reject it?

“Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country“. – Alexis de Tocqueville

We are rapidly entering an era where our past is being erased or re-written to accommodate an ideological view of who and what we are. In an effort to strip us of our national pride and invoke a multi-cultural society, we are gradually giving up our freedoms. How close is this revelation?

“There is coming a day, when freedom will just be a essence of the mind, an inner dwelling that was once physically attainable. They will tell you where you can live, and what you can wear and drive, what and how much you can eat and drink, and how to purchase those. They will strip you of your religion, race, gender, national origin, age, color, creed, views and power, and have control of the population. They will set in a new world order, and put you in the back of the line, marked and branded. Everything before will be erased, and the new will be manipulated. And what you believe most, can only be kept secret, for all must fall in line of their govern. Anything outside will be abolished. Even death, will be sought, but restrained. They will execute complete and total control over everything, and be sole owners of your soul. The light, that once guided will go dim, and liberty will be like an unwilled bird, suppressed in the cage of your ribs; wings cut off.” ― Anthony Liccione

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude”. Hayek

“I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself”. Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

For all those who call for silencing speech that is offensive, consider that the offense taken by one is an opinion of another. Who is to say which is entitled to the liberty. Claiming micro-aggressions or hurt feelings are nothing more than attempts to deny others rights. Consider the following:

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate”. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation enlightened as it is if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.” –Samuel Adams